On Friday, 5 October 2007 00:05, D. Michael McIntyre wrote: > I think it's kind of stupid how Spanish (among others) almost completely > rid itself of the neuter gender (except for lo, ello, esto, etc.) how Latin > used to ascribe non-neuter genders to lots of things that should have been > neuter. This is one thing English gets right. A pencil is an it, dammit.
I know that you have a real issue against this Spanish idiosyncrasy :) OTOH, I think that the way English among others pretend that sex should not be named at all is pretty stupid. Like the politically correct language, or Janet Jackson's boob affaire. LOL. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l64KTLIcIAM More seriusly, Latin can't be blamed alone for your gender nightmare. In Spanish, as in all Romance languages, the grammatical gender of inanimate entities is quite arbitrary, and often different from that used in sister languages. For example, Portuguese "árvore" ("tree") and "flor" ("flower") are feminine, while Spanish "árbol" and Italian "fiore" are masculine; Portuguese "mar" ("sea") and "mapa" ("map") are masculine, while French "mer" and "mappe" are feminine. In Spanish, "mar" can be either masculine or feminine, but never neuter. :-) Regards, Pedro ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-devel mailing list [email protected] - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-devel
